Primeval Series 7, Episode 2 - The League of Anomalous Gentlefolk
by qjay
Summary: A sci-fi convention, anomaly-response teams from around the world, and... carnivorous kangaroos? Danny Quinn and Evan Cross guest star as the ARC team deals with an outbreak of ancient Australian megafauna in the second story of my seventh series.
1. Teaser

**Primeval 7.2 **("The League of Anomalous Gentlefolk")

by qjay

___DISCLAIMER: Primeval was created by Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines. It does not belong to me. This is not-for-profit fan fiction, and no infringement is intended._

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: _The assumption in my stories is that anomalies become public knowledge after Convergence. I realise this contradicts Primeval: New World, but I began the series before I'd seen it. I do try to fit the shows together otherwise.

For the sake of this series, Connor Temple's first encounter with Evan Cross (in the "New World" pilot) occurred in the missing year between Series Five and the start of my stories. Their second encounter (in the "New World" finale) occurred between my episodes 6.2 and 6.3, shortly after Connor and Abby married. Somehow the New World cliffhanger worked out so the timeline was restored, obviously.

_ALSO:_ I'm not British, so please excuse any slang or terminology that would not be used in the UK.

* * *

**Previously on Primeval: Series Six**

One year after the end of Series Five, the team got embroiled in a conflict with a covert group code-named Southfield, which studied anomalies and used their knowledge to alter time to their own advantage. When Southfield attacked the ARC and killed several members of the team, Abby Maitland-Temple and Matt Anderson were forced to change history in order to stop them. This resulted in Matt's being trapped somewhere in the past and in the creation of a new timeline, which only a few people remember, including Abby and her friend Danny Quinn. (Danny returned from the past in the intervening year and now leads a new anomaly-response team in Los Angeles, USA.) After defeating Southfield, Abby and her husband Connor retired from the team and lived quietly for two years, hoping to avoid further changes to time. They had a daughter named Nicole Sarah Temple.

Meanwhile, Becker took over the ARC team. But an unexplained explosion while the team was dealing with an anomaly at the Green Hill Power Plant resulted in the deaths of thirty-two people, including Becker's new team-mates. Becker was disgraced and dismissed from his post, and the ARC was nearly closed down. James Lester managed to keep it open by promising Richard Wilson, the Minister's influential assistant, that he would find new team leaders for the facility, experienced hands with no connection to the Green Hill disaster: Connor and Abby Temple.

Blackmailed back into service, Connor and Abby must now protect the world from anomalies, while also working out the mysteries behind Green Hill and Matt's disappearance. But the greatest danger is a familiar one, for it seems their old enemy Helen Cutter is still alive in this new timeline. She's already paid a visit to the Temple household and left a calling card in Nicole Temple's room, and the founding members of the ARC are very much afraid she's only getting started...

* * *

**Teaser**

Night fell over London, and the city shone with a thousand lights: restaurants, shops, cars racing back and forth. The dizzying patterns of illumination lent a magical quality to the modern metropolis, seeming to offer an evening full of endless possibilities to residents and visitors alike.

Lost amidst all this spectacle, buried in the basement of the West End Convention Centre, Charlie Jackson was more concerned with numbing routine than endless possibility. As a tired old night-shift custodian, he swept and hoovered and cleaned up the mess left behind by others, and he had very little about him of what might be called imagination or fancy.

Yet as he turned the corner into another wing of the convention centre, Charlie was certain he must have been imagining things, for what he saw before him certainly could not exist in any real, tangible sense. It resembled something from a nature documentary he'd once seen on the Australian Outback. A kangaroo, perhaps. No- stockier than a kangaroo. A wombat, that was what they were called! The creature sitting in the middle of the corridor, peering at Charlie with curious black eyes, had to be some sort of wombat.

But unlike the cute, fuzzy creatures from the documentary, this wombat happened to be the size of a hippopotamus- two metres high, weighing at least a couple thousand kilos. Large enough to crush Charlie Jackson underfoot, if it took in mind to do so. Charlie was fairly certain the creatures didn't grow to such a size- if such a thing could be real, he'd never heard of it.

He first thought it might be someone's idea of an alien. The annual Pulsar Convention was to be held at the West End Centre in a matter of days, and he'd seen the exhibitions being assembled; the floor above was full of all manner of strange, sci-fi spectacles. Perhaps the creature belonged to one of those. It might have been a robot, like they had at theme parks._ Animatronic,_ that was the word.

The only trouble was, as Charlie Jackson stared at the creature, as it tossed its shaggy head and moved about the corridor nervously, it remained persistently real. He started to back away from it, wondering whom to call about such a thing- who would believe him?

That's when he heard the woman's voice behind him.

"It's called_ Diprotodon_," she said. "Giant marsupial from the Pleistocene. Should be fairly harmless, so long as you're not a vegetable."

Charlie turned- the woman was probably in her forties, attractive but severe, with strangely intense eyes. Somehow she made Charlie even more nervous than the creature, and he back-pedalled a few more steps before gathering his courage.

"But... what's it doing here?" he asked the woman. "For that matter, what are _you_? No one's supposed to be down here!"

"I just came to drop off this." She held up a silver orb reminiscent of a small Christmas ornament, before tucking it into a ventilation grate. "It's Southfield technology. Generates interference which should prevent the ARC's Anomaly Detector from activating."

Charlie blinked. "That's all Greek to me, luv."

"No doubt," said the woman, with a dangerous smile. "I'm more of a Latin girl. _Veni, vidi, vici._ Quite loosely translated, it means: Now that I'm back, I know what I want and I intend to get it. And I'm sorry, but... you're in my way."

"In the way of wh...?"

Charlie trailed off when he heard something strange- something growling in the darkened corridor just beyond the now-nervous _Diprotodon_. He frowned at the woman, who smiled placidly.

She was still smiling when something big slammed into Charlie Jackson's chest. He was knocked to the ground, and hit his head on the floor. His vision swam in and out of focus.

He felt a great pressure on his chest. He saw something, a powerfully built animal like a strange kind of lion, perched there, ready to rip out his throat. He saw the woman, still smiling.

The lion-creature struck, and Charlie saw nothing else.

* * *

Safely ensconced in his office at the ARC, James Lester couldn't help feeling a bit sentimental. It was very unlike him, but after all, Becker was such a respectful, businesslike, chain-of-command sort of team leader. The old office hadn't seen a good row in _years._

Fortunately, the ARC's new team leader was a bit more unpredictable, not to say unstable. If she couldn't quite match her mentor Nick Cutter for sheer scientific stubbornness, Abby Maitland-Temple would give it her very best. And she was something else, too, something Cutter must have felt often but kept under much tighter control: Abby was _angry._ Angry at Lester, angry at the world, but most of all, angry at one Helen Cutter, another emotion that would have been familiar to Helen's late, sort-of-ex husband.

"I tell you, I saw her!" Abby fumed. She was leaning across Lester's desk, palms pressed flat against it, blue eyes blazing. "She was in my house. She was_ in my daughter's room_."

Lester sighed. Not that the very thought of Helen Cutter invading one's bedchamber wasn't enough to give one nightmares, but he felt compelled to play the cooler head. "You said you only glimpsed her for a moment, in the darkness. Are you sure you're not mistaken?"

"I know Helen Cutter," Abby said, grim. "It was her."

"She left a live ammonite beside the baby's cot," said another voice: Connor Temple, Abby's slightly long-suffering worse half, hovered in the background, alongside Jess Parker, who was there mostly because she disliked being left out of anything.

Lester frowned at Connor. "A live... what? And for goodness' sake, why?"

"Because she once sent a message to Cutter the same way," Connor explained. "He told me. That was how he found out she was back, the first time. Nobody else would have known that."

"Oh," said Abby, "and there was a note attached. It said _SOON_. What do you think is happening soon, Lester?"

"It may be happening already." All eyes turned to Jess, who cleared her throat. "I was about to tell you when you all started quarrelling. It's about the incident at the bank yesterday. You know how witness descriptions are always a bit muddled? Well, I put them into the computer to clean them up- like a police artist. This is the composite image."

She crossed over to Lester's desk and appropriated his keyboard without asking. Then she turned his screen around so everyone could see it: She'd pulled up what looked for all the world like a sketch of Helen Cutter's face. Lester saw the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach mirrored on Abby and Connor's faces. Of all the people they'd lost due to anomalies in the course of eight years... why did _she_ have to be the one to come back?

"Helen was at the _bank_?" Connor murmured. "Why? Robbery doesn't seem like her style."

Lester sighed. "It's possible the murder was her real goal. Mrs. Evans was-"

"Who?" Abby said, looking up sharply.

"The victim shot in the vault," Jess said. "Well, you were there."

"I was... busy rounding up compys. I didn't interview the witnesses personally."

Abby's face betrayed chagrin; no doubt she was thinking that Matt or Cutter or Danny wouldn't have let such an important detail slip. Of course, Lester had seen all of them miss many important details- temporarily, at least- over the years. But a bit of inadequacy was good for the soul; it produced greater effort. So he let the moment pass.

"The intruder... apparently Helen... killed an Elizabeth Evans," Jess said into the silence. "Vice-President of the bank. We have her picture, too."

Jess called something else up on the screen: The picture of a stout older woman with scowling lips and wickedly smiling eyes. The sight of her sent a shiver through Lester, and that was when she was _alive._

Abby stared at the picture for a long moment before turning to her friend. "Jess, could you give us a moment?"

"But I-"

"Right now, please."

She may not have mastered all the intricacies of the job yet, but Abby exerted her new authority like an experienced professional: Her request was polite, even friendly, but not really a request. Jess sighed and left the office; the fact that the field team so often handled the interesting part of missions without her was probably_ why_ she disliked being left out, but she was more than used to it.

Even when she was gone and the door closed behind her, Abby hesitated to speak her mind.

"I take it you knew the victim?" Lester prompted.

"You did, too- once." Abby sighed. "She was with Southfield in the other timeline. She was one of their leaders."

Lester frowned. "In this one, she seems to have been a cut-throat but essentially respectable woman of business. Helen would seemingly have no reason to kill her. Unless-"

"Unless she knows about the other timeline," Connor supplied. "She knows everything we did."

Lester nodded, The three of them regarded one another; none of their faces suggested they were thinking pleasant thoughts. Abby started shaking her head.

"What's she after? What game is she playing?"

"I don't know, but I'm assigning security protection for both of you." Lester grimaced; Wilson was going to adore that, but it couldn't be helped. "Just in case."

Abby looked at him almost fondly. "It's a lovely thought, but I'm not sure it'll do much good. She could be anywhere, do anything. I'd like to send the baby off with Connor's mum or my brother, but... same problem. We'd just be putting more people in danger."

"I don't think she'll attack us like that," Connor said. "Not yet. Last night, she was just telling us she _could_ hurt us if she wanted. When she's ready, she'll be more direct."

Abby scoffed. "Was that supposed to be comforting?"

"My point is, we shouldn't let it go that far. Stop her before she starts."

"Well, you're paid to be a genius, not me. How do we do that?"

Connor opened his mouth, but produced no sound; no brilliant idea was forthcoming. Lester wouldn't have expected one; the simple fact was, they'd never had much luck stopping Helen Cutter from accomplishing her designs; they usually managed somehow, but not without terrible losses. At the moment, she was so far ahead of them in the game, her next move was all but impossible to predict.

Or perhaps it wasn't. Lester sank into his chair and rubbed his hands together before him.

"There's one target likely to interest her. You've both been out of circulation so long, you might be unaware that world response to anomalies has grown exponentially over the last two years. Practically every major nation now has a response plan of some sort; most have their own variations on the ARC.

"London is soon to host a secret conference of representatives from around the world, with the goal of agreeing upon rules and practices that might be adopted by the UN, to maintain safety standards, train response teams in undeveloped areas, that sort of thing. If the conference goes well, it might save the world from the next Helen Cutter; presumably that means the original would like to disrupt it."

Abby frowned. "Do you think she knows about it?"

"Helen knows anything she likes," Connor sighed. "Who's gonna attend this conference?"

Lester ticked nations off on his fingers. "Danny Quinn, for one, representing the Americans. Evan Cross of Canada. China, Russia... all the major powers."

"Who's attending for us?" Abby asked.

Lester gave her a look that said _You poor, naïve girl_. He could almost see Abby's heart sinking as realisation set in.

"Oh, no! No! I've got to attend_ meetings?_ With _diplomats_?"

Lester shrugged. "It's the field leader's responsibility. Becker was meant to represent us, but of course that's now impossible."

"When were you gonna tell me?"

"The conference is on Wednesday, so... Tuesday evening?"

Abby glared at him for a long moment. "I hate you more than Connor does. We both hate you, but I hate you more. I want to be clear about that."

"Crystal," Lester said. They both had some distance to go to match Cutter. "Assuming Helen tries something at the conference, can we be ready for her?"

Connor nodded. "Leave it to me."

"Very well, then. I think that's all."

Lester turned and picked up the phone, meaning to contact the Minister and arrange that security. Connor turned and strode out the door, a man on a mission. Abby stared after him, a bit concerned, then shot another annoyed glance at Lester before following.

_A long way to match Cutter,_ he thought as he dialled the phone,_ but gaining all the time._ They could hate him all they liked, so long as they stayed alive. Lester intended to see that they did; he'd lost control of many things at the ARC since Green Hill, but that he intended to accomplish in the time remaining to him... no matter what it took.

* * *

Abby followed her husband out into the corridor, thinking dark thoughts. She didn't like the way he charged ahead, outpacing her, or the slightly fierce gleam in his eye when he spoke to Lester. What happened to Nick Cutter had been difficult for the whole team, but Connor more than anyone had never made peace with it. Now it had been thrown back in his face.

A lot of people thought Connor was silly; most of the time, _Abby_ thought he was silly. But there was an upside to that silliness; he was gentle. Connor would never hurt anyone; he didn't know how to really hate. Except, perhaps, Helen Cutter.

"Connor!" she called, when he didn't slow. "I didn't like the sound of that."

Her husband turned. "What sound?"

"The 'leave that to me.' Like you're going off to fight Darth Vader or something."

"No, nothing like that," Connor said. "Vader might have pity on us."

He started fast-walking again, and this time Abby ran to catch his arm before he could disappear. "What are you gonna do?"

"Oh, you know me. Just... tinker a bit."

He wasn't looking at her. Connor was a bad liar- not that he didn't attempt it often enough, but he was always perfectly transparent. For once, Abby wished she didn't know what he was thinking.

"Last time you started tinkering," she said quietly, "we destroyed an entire timeline."

"Fine. I won't destroy any timelines. Don't need anything that dramatic."

"Stooping to Helen's methods won't solve anything! I know; I've done it!"

Finally he faced her, but the intensity in his eyes did nothing to allay Abby's concerns.

"What do you want me to do, Abby? Handle it like Cutter did? Just keep giving her chance after chance until she kills me? Or you? Or-"

Abby squeezed his hand. "Don't even say that."

Connor shook his head. "All Helen's ever done for as long as I've known her is destroy things I loved. Not this time."

"Connor..." she hissed. "I understand. Believe me. But do you really want to provoke some sort of showdown with a woman who gets her weapons in the future?"

"Maybe." Connor grinned- a strange sort of grin. "Who d'you think invented them?"

He winked at her before withdrawing his hand and walking away. Abby stared at his departing back. She'd known her husband a long time; the dreamer, the team geek. He always wanted to be cool. She knew he envied the more self-assured members of the team, like Stephen and Becker. They had an air of danger Connor could never quite achieve. He kept trying, not least to impress his wife; she'd had a thing for bad boys, back when they'd first met.

Abby shook her head and sighed, wondering at the change in her husband's attitude. All she could think was: _Great._ Now_ he's dangerous..._


	2. Act One

**Primeval 7.2 **("The League of Anomalous Gentlefolk")

by qjay

___DISCLAIMER: Primeval was created by Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines. It does not belong to me. This is not-for-profit fan fiction, and no infringement is intended._

* * *

**Act One**

Days passed. Connor worked in his lab, the anomalies stayed blessedly quiet, and the trouble with Helen faded to an ominous shadow in the background of their lives. The business at the bank was all but forgotten. Connor and Abby weren't quite fighting; they kept their conversations light, avoiding the things they really wanted to say, because they knew they wouldn't agree.

The rest of the team was hardly on better terms: Becker was back at work, demoted to captain of security, but he rarely spoke of anything but business, and sometimes appeared haggard, as though he was sleeping too little or drinking too much, possibly both. Emily Merchant was still brooding, either over Matt or the 21st Century in general, and resisted most of Jess's attempts to draw her out. Claudia Brown- the former timeline's Jenny Lewis, cheated of yet another identity by the timeline shift- was pleasant on the surface, but Abby was certain she knew more than she was telling, and possibly held them responsible for the life and marriage she'd lost. She asked a few too many questions, and her smiles seemed to come at the wrong moments.

It was this misfit team- along with their latest recruit, a young man named Alan Hall who was Lester's nephew and Connor's former student, and who acted like someone had force-fed Connor's younger self_ Star Trek_ episodes for six months and then hurled him forward in time- that surrounded Abby as she approached the West End Convention Centre one cloudy morning in the middle of the week.

She was already quite horrified- horrified she couldn't seem to bring the team together the way her predecessors had done, horrified to find herself in a businesslike jacket and skirt, politely made up like some sort of miniature Elizabeth Evans, horrified that her daughter was sitting at home surrounded by security, implicitly _endangered, _while Abby was forced to pursue this ridiculousness, horrified by the realisation this was her life now. And then she saw something that chased the other horrors temporarily from her mind: she saw the crowd awaiting entrance to the Convention Centre.

They were all... _geeks_! There were hundreds of them, dressed as Klingons and Borg, Iron Men and Black Widows, elves and Hobbits and at least thirty Doctors, chattering and laughing and talking a language that was all foreign to Abby except for the bits and pieces she'd picked up from Connor. The team stood back and frowned, first at each other and then at the crowd.

Claudia found her voice first. "Is it me, or do these diplomats seem a bit... out of the ordinary?"

"Oh, the diplomats aren't here!" said Alan, who might have been the only one pleased by this turn of events. "We've got our own space, on the lower level. This is just our cover!"

"A sci-fi convention?" said Connor. Even he looked a bit doubtful.

"Brilliant, right? It was my suggestion!"

"Yours?" Connor scoffed at the idea Alan could possibly have contributed something useful. "What do you know about it?"

"Are you kidding? I'm an old hand at this. It's in my blood, and not just Uncle James. Another uncle on my dad's side worked for some secret organisation in Canada. Pretty sure it was that Project Magnet you've heard rumours about. Got sacked a couple of years ago, after a botched assignment; I've never seen anyone so angry."

"Yeah, that... figures," Connor sighed. Amusingly, he seemed to find Alan's ramblings about as fascinating as Cutter had once found his own. He also looked and sounded exhausted. "But what about _this_ thing? Did you clear it with Lester?"

"Well, no." Alan looked away. "He hardly notices I'm in the room. I suggested it to Richard Wilson, last time he was at the ARC. He really liked it; said no one would suspect a thing!"

"Least of all Lester," Claudia smirked.

Alan looked confused; Abby didn't have the heart to tell him he'd been used for a pawn in his uncle's eternal battles with the Minister's office. It didn't matter, anyway; the thing was done.

"Maybe it won't be so bad..." said Jess, the eternal optimist.

Abby took another look at the field of convention-goers before them and decided optimism was probably misplaced. She took a step forward.

"You lot go on ahead," Becker murmured. "If Wilson's here, I'd better not be seen."

"Right," Abby said. She felt awful for Becker, being held responsible for a tragedy he couldn't have prevented. But that, too, was a problem for another time. She let him fall back from the group.

"I know this! This is the Pulsar Convention!" Emily exclaimed as they pushed past Daleks and zombies alike. She turned to Connor. "We were going to attend this! Remember, two years ago? You were going to dress as Harry Potter, and I was going to be Hermione."

"Um... yup. Right. Something like that..."

"No offence, Professor," said Alan, "I've always seen you as more of a Weasley..."

"Look, guys," Connor said, "We've really got to focus on-"

"Besides, the whole Potter craze is played out. It's_ Hunger Games_ now. Or, even better, _Walking Dead!_ Remember what you said the other night? Best new genre show in years! Now,_ that's_ what you should have gone as."

"Really?" said Emily. "Because_ I _thought you were afraid of zombies."

"Um... well... sort of..." Caught between two nerd acolytes, Connor looked to Abby for help. When she only shrugged, He glanced at Emily a bit guiltily. "A lot's changed since we used to hang out."

"Apparently," said Emily. "You know, I don't know the first thing about 21st Century diplomacy. If you don't mind, I'll just... stay out here with Becker."

_Lucky you,_ Abby thought, but she kept silent as Emily departed, too. The moment stretched out, oddly uncomfortable. She chalked it up to Connor being right: A lot_ had_ changed since they left the ARC, and it had put a strain on all their friendships. Considering the difficulties she was having with Claudia, Abby wasn't one to talk.

She was running out of back burners for the problems she had no time for, so she just ignored this one and pushed through the crowd. Someone, she was fairly sure, hit on her in Klingon; someone else asked if she was "supposed to be Rose Tyler or something." It was going to be a long day.

It didn't get any easier when they flashed their identification and got admitted to the convention floor; indeed, the sights only became more indecipherable, and apparently sent Alan into a tizzy.

"Oh, look at that!" he cried, darting between one booth and another. "_Battlestar Galactica_, original series Colonial Viper replica! Signed by the cast! Brilliant!"

Connor only shrugged. "Cylon Base Star's cooler. Got that one signed by Starbuck."

"What, blonde Starbuck or the bloke from the_ A-Team_?"

"The blonde, of course!" Connor said, as though it were obvious.

Claudia frowned at him. "You've really got sort of a blonde fixation, haven't you?"

"Not_ just_ blondes," Connor said. "Nothing wrong with redheads. Jean Grey... Amy Pond... you..."

She rolled her eyes, turning to Abby. "Are you going to let him flirt, right in front of you?"

"Where would I storm off to? It's the Land of a Thousand Connors..." Abby gestured around the floor, indicating the dimensions of her private hell.

Claudia laughed. "On that flattering note, I'd better get downstairs. You're for the Tech Exchange, right, Jess?" The team co-ordinator nodded. "I'm with the outreach group in the next room but one. I'll walk with you."

Claudia and Jess departed, while Abby and Connor had to circle back to retrieve Alan, who was gawking at one of the booths.

"I don't actually have anything to do here unless my uncle finds me- either one." Alan shrugged. "I'm gonna take in the exhibits, see if I can get Amanda Tapping's autograph..."

"Get one for me!" Connor said, as the boy hurried off to join the queue. When Abby poked him in the ribs, he explained helpfully, "_She's_ blonde, too."

Abby scoffed. "Claudia had a point. Serve you right if I shaved my head bald."

"Nah, that'd be cool! Just like Lieutenant Ilia in-"

"Really, _really _thin ice," Abby said.

"Yup," said Connor, and he fell silent.

They walked a little further, Abby shaking her head in dismay. "I know I've done bad things. I shouldn't have destroyed the world for selfish reasons. But isn't this taking karma a bit too far?"

"Abby, relax, we'll soon be downstairs! You've got to get into the spirit of it!" To demonstrate, Connor gave a split-fingered salute to a tall fellow in robes with pointed ears made of putty. "Peace and long life!"

"And to you, brother," said the costumed man, solemnly returning the salute.

"This is my nightmare," Abby groaned, and soldiered on.

* * *

Outside the convention centre, Becker was peering at Emily Merchant curiously. "I'm surprised you're not inside. I've heard you blathering on about sci-fi with Connor. You've never sounded happier."

"I'd have been superfluous," Emily said, more bitterly than she intended. She frowned at the other. "Besides, I was curious what you were up to."

Becker shrugged elaborately. "What, me? Why would I be up to anything?"

"I don't know. But you must have known Wilson would be here. You didn't just remember suddenly, at the door. So why come at all?"

"Perhaps I needed an outing," Becker said. "You could do with one, too. You haven't been in the best spirits since you came back."

Emily glared at him. "Who made you the Minister of Happy?"

"You know what they say. Those who can, do..."

"And those who can't, sneak around looking for ways to attend conferences in secret?"

Now it was Becker's turn to look unhappy. "I'd just like to be close by, for moral support."

Emily was still deciding whether to accept that, when they happened to bump into a large fellow in _Star Trek's_ Klingon attire, who was standing in the queue sipping a Diet Coke. Said drink proceeded to spill all over him, and he growled at Becker angrily.

"Foolish human! You have insulted the House of- oi! Wait, what are you-"

This last came as Becker picked the man up by the scruff of the neck and threw him to the back of the line, then walked through the space where he'd been as though nothing had happened. The big fellow thought about pursuing them, but a glance from Becker made him think better of it.

"No, no anger there," Emily laughed. "Just moral support..."

"All right!" Becker hissed, and lowered his voice. "I haven't had a security posting in over two years, remember? This is my chance to learn from the best in the world. I don't particularly care about diplomacy, but I do care about doing my job properly. As long as you're here, perhaps you could get me in the door?"

Emily looked away with a sigh. "I don't know, Becker. Lester said..."

"Lester doesn't care, as long as Wilson doesn't see me. We've just got to keep an eye out for him."

"I've never met the man!" Emily protested, quite reasonably. "I don't know what he looks like!"

"Just look for someone arrogant."

"That describes a lot of people," Emily scoffed, thinking of present company. Then something else caught her eye. "Her, for example."

Becker turned to follow her gaze. A lithe, exotic woman with long, black hair and deadly green eyes had been watching their whole exchange. As soon as she realised she'd been seen, she faded back into the crowd.

Becker stopped short. "That's odd..."

"What?" said Emily.

"I recognise her. That was Natalya Azarova, field leader of the Russian equivalent to the ARC. Real throwback to the KGB days, that one. I spoke to her just before Green Hill; she thought this conference was a waste of time. I wonder what piqued her interest?"

"Perhaps she's just following orders, like it or not."

"Not Natalya." Becker shook his head. "We go back a few years. She's up to something."

Emily shrugged. "Sure you're not overcompensating on this security thing?"

"I'm going after her," Becker said, nodding toward the convention centre. "And she's going in there. I can get in your way or my way, but my way involves security guards in body casts."

He stared at Emily, who tried to appear resolute. The only trouble was, she could imagine Matt asking for exactly the same favour. She could imagine_ herself_ doing the same thing, only months earlier. She'd had a taste for adventure, once. She didn't like to think she'd lost it, even if she'd done so for good reasons...

"Oh, very well!" she sighed. "Come along- and try to be inconspicuous!"

From the little smile on Becker's face, he'd known he was going to win that battle. From the speed with which the smile disappeared, the larger battle he was fighting with himself remained inconclusive. Emily knew the feeling.

* * *

Connor and Abby were arguing as they approached the lifts, but really, it was hard to imagine a time at the ARC when they weren't arguing over something. The two-year grace period when they'd been under relatively little stress and their squabbles had been limited to small, easily resolved issues like whose turn it was to make dinner seemed a thousand years away.

Connor wanted to return to those days soon, not least because getting back to that place would mean Helen Cutter was gone again and his family was safe. He also wanted to win one of these arguments with Abby, finally, for once. That was proving trickier, but he was so absorbed in the attempt, he didn't notice the tall, rugged fellow with close-cropped blond hair, perhaps fifty years old but with a youthful energy to him, who leaned back against the wall and watched them quarrel with obvious amusement:

"The convention's not that bad!" Connor was saying. "You should give it a chance!"

"What d'you need me for? You've got geeky sidekicks following you like the Pied Piper..."

Connor winced. "Don't remind me. Thing is, I'd _like_ to spend some time with my wife. I just said we should hear some of the guest speakers! You act like I asked you to dress up in Seven of Nine's catsuit!"

"In whose _what_?" Abby shook her head. "No, forget it! I don't even _want_ to know what that means! We have a job to do!"

"I don't know why you never make time for the things I like!"

"Oh, don't you dare! I think I've made time for quite a_ lot_ of-"

The man cleared his throat, and that's when they noticed him. Actually, Abby might have Noticed him, with a capital "n." Connor didn't see that he was worth worrying about, however; he was _old_.

"G'day," the fellow said, with an easy grin. "Sorry. Don't mind me, just waiting for the lift."

Connor and Abby frowned at each other and declared a silent, temporary truce.

"You're for the conference?" Connor said.

"That's right," said the rugged fellow, in a discernible accent that announced his nation of original before he said it. "Randall Royce, your friendly colleague from Down Under."

While Connor shook the fellow's hand, his wife performed the introductions. "I'm Abby; this is Connor."

"Not Abby _Maitland_?" Royce said, suddenly interested.

A little disturbed by his enthusiasm, Connor cleared his throat and murmured, "Maitland-_Temple_..."

"Oh!" said Royce. "But you're ace! Brilliant! I read your paper on the care and treatment of extinct theropods! Taught me everything I know! Imagine me running into_ Abby Maitland _at the lift! Oh, this is a bonzer day, I don't mind telling you!"

Abby turned a satisfied little smirk on Connor that said _See? Finally somebody thinks _I'm_ the genius _while the Australian pumped her hand.

"Funny thing, though. After you wrote that paper, you fell off the edge of the earth! Not literally. Although, I've done that. Not literally. But almost."

Abby cleared her throat, nervous as always about this dangerous subject. "We left the ARC for a while. I've been working for a proper zoo. You know how it goes."

"Too right." Randall Royce shook his head. "Still, I can't imagine wasting away, feeding penguins, after living on the edge like this. Ask me, anomalies are the last great frontier. Better than the Outback!"

A soft _ding_ indicated the arrival of the first of two lifts, none too soon for Connor.

"Here we are!" said Royce, as the doors opened. "Hope you don't mind riding together. I've only got a million questions about raptor biology!"

Abby turned to Connor. "You're setting up in the control room, right? I'll see you a bit later."

"Er, Abby..." Connor tugged at her wrist before she got on the lift. "A word?"

Abby shrugged. With a polite smile at Royce, who held the doors, she allowed Connor to lead her a few steps out of earshot.

"Sure you're all right with this bloke?" Connor whispered, glancing back at the Australian. "He seems a bit..."

"Charming?" Abby suggested.

"I was gonna say 'mad.'"

"Oh!" Abby patted his hand. "I'm sure it'll be all right. After all... he's _blond_."

Grinning mischievously, Abby turned and boarded the lift alongside Royce. The Aussie tossed Connor a jaunty wave as the doors closed. He stood there watching them for a long moment after the lift departed.

"Well, I _knew_ the blonde thing was coming back to bite me. It was only a matter of time..."

The second lift dinged, and Connor was about to step into it. Then he saw who it contained. He recognised the sardonic, slightly-too-handsome face of Canadian entrepreneur Evan Cross, and a tough-looking woman with long, brown hair: Dylan Weir, traveller through anomalies and member of Evan's team.

"Oh," said Connor.

"It's_ you,_" said Evan.

"Hello."

"We're headed for the-"

"Control room?"

"Unfortunately."

"Brilliant," said Connor, and he stepped into the lift with a sigh.

Evan pressed the button, and the lift doors closed on them before he turned back to Connor. "Everything okay? You seem tense."

"Did the Aussie kidnap you and force-feed you stories about the Outback?" Dylan asked. "He almost got me earlier."

"No. He got my wife, but I escaped by chewing off me leg." Connor sighed. "Outback. I could handle the Outback. Like to see him handle_ Spinosaurus_..."

Evan laughed. "Careful what you wish for."

"Don't worry about me. Today of all days, I'm ready for anything."

He meant it when he said it. He had good reason for saying it. But as the lift lurched its way down toward the level where the conference was being held, he had no way of knowing about the swirling, glittering anomaly that had appeared at the end of the corridor where he'd just been- or about the hairy paw with razor-sharp talons that proceeded from it, accompanied by a low, ominous growling...

* * *

On the main floor of the convention centre, Becker and Emily tracked Natalya Azarova through the crowds, or tried to do so. She almost seemed to be taunting them, appearing just long enough to let them pick up her trail, then disappearing just as quickly.

_Natalya always did like games,_ Becker thought, although the ones she'd enjoyed in Eastern Europe back in the old days hadn't always been the sort that were fun for anyone else. He hadn't thought about those days- or some of the things he'd seen- in a long time, and all things being equal, he preferred to keep it that way. But Green Hill was bringing all sorts of unpleasant memories back to roost for Becker; why should those be any different?

After appearing again for a split-second, ten or fifteen metres in front of them, Azarova suddenly turned and vanished down a long row of booths hawking memorabilia. With Emily lagging a step behind, still trying to frame some sort of protest, Becker rounded the same corner at nearly a run-

And slammed into Connor's annoying little protégée, whose arms were so full of sci-fi swag, he could hardly see where he was going. One particular package fell from his arms and met the floor with a distinct _shattering_ sound...

"Here now, watch it!" Becker snapped.

"_Me _watch it?" said Alan. "I think you'll find you've damaged a complete set of original commemorative _Return of the Jedi _glasses from 1983- formerly in mint condition! I hope you're planning to pay for them!"

Having neither time nor patience for such chatter, Becker took a step toward the kid- but Emily, somewhat reluctantly, got in the way.

"No, no. Don't go taking anything out on him. It's not at all a fair fight."

Which was certainly true; if Emily, who obviously had a problem with the kid, could admit as much, Becker could, too. He even bent down to help Alan clean up the broken glass.

"Are you gonna be with the team... long-term, then?" he asked, hoping for a negative response.

He didn't expect the mischievous smile he got in return. "I dunno. Are you gonna keep poking around where you're not supposed to be?"

"I don't have time to explain," Becker said. "We're looking for someone, and thanks to you, we've lost her."

"Strange how reluctant she is to actually stay lost," said Emily.

She gestured down the line of booths. Sure enough, there she was: the raven-haired beauty standing halfway across the room, watching, all but beckoning them. Becker shook his head:_ Yeah, this is gonna be problematic..._

"Find Lester," he said to Emily. "Tell him what's going on. I'll keep her in sight."

"Be careful."

Emily nodded briskly and hurried in the opposite direction. When she was gone, Becker turned to Alan. "As for you..."

But Alan was staring at the Russian agent, transfixed. "You're going after _her_? Oh, I am so going with you."

"No, you're not," said Becker. "I don't need any help."

"_I_ do! When we catch her, you can make introductions."

Without waiting for permission, Alan grabbed up his purchases and hurried after Azarova. Becker didn't like to think what might happen if he reached her with no one around to protect him, so unhappily- swearing under his breath- he hurried to catch up. He wondered if young Connor Temple had been this annoying in his first days at the ARC. Judging by the evidence, Becker wouldn't have envied Connor's team-mates one bit...

* * *

When the lift reached the lower level, Connor stepped out at a fast walk, hoping the others might turn in the opposite direction. He made his excuses very quickly, barely listening to himself:

"Well, nice to see you again. Sorry I've got no chance to catch up. Maybe some other time..."

To his relief, his Canadian acquaintances didn't follow. Though he did hear them murmuring in voices they probably thought he couldn't hear:

"Aren't _we_ going to the control room?" Dylan whispered.

"Give it a minute," Evan said. "I don't trust that guy. Every time he's around, things get weird..."

_You have no idea, mate,_ Connor thought, glad for the reprieve. But he didn't get very far before another voice started calling his name, accompanied by quick footsteps in the corridor behind him.

"Connor! Connor Temple! Hold on; I want a word with you!"

This voice was much more welcome, and Connor was already grinning as he turned. Sure enough, there came Danny Quinn- tall and strong, ever the Man of Action- followed by his second-in-command at the Los Angeles ARC, quietly professional African-American Lisa Barrett.

"Danny!" Connor said. "I heard you'd be here. How did things go with those anomalies you were-"

"Never mind that," Danny said, "we've really got to talk. It's about Abby."

Connor frowned. He wondered if Danny knew things weren't going especially well on that front at the moment. It wouldn't have taken much to guess. But Danny was hardly to type to sit him down for a long chat about relationships...

He waited for the other to explain, but Danny got a funny look on his face as he approached. "Why is Evan Cross hiding in the lift?"

"Who knows?" said Connor. "Every time that guy's around, things get weird. Now, what's this about Abby?"

From the deep breath Danny took to steel himself, it was going to be a lengthy conversation of _some_ sort, and on exactly the wrong day for it. Connor had gone to some difficulty to make the conference centre secure, and he hoped he wasn't running out of time to put his plans into action...

* * *

On the same level, but the other side of the sprawling convention centre, and after several false starts, Claudia Brown and Jess Parker finally located their destination: A cramped room with a hastily printed sign that said 'Tech Exchange,' made even more cramped by the dozens of semi-futuristic machines being assembled and exhibited within. Their caretakers made the denizens of the sci-fi convention look positively glamorous.

"Is this yours?" Claudia said, frowning at the mass of gadgets. "Looks like fun."

"Don't mock!" said Jess. "This is like a fashion magazine for me."

"To each their own..."

Jess was already absorbed in visions of technology, so Claudia turned to start the search for her own meeting room, when suddenly she stopped and blinked.

"Er... Jess?"

"Yes?"

"Is any of those devices meant to... project weird holograms?"

The younger woman frowned at Claudia as she turned. "I don't think so. Why?"

"Because," Claudia said, "I might be seeing things..."

She pointed across the corridor at something watching them in the dim light: something that looked for all the world like a kangaroo. But if so, it was the strangest such creature imaginable, for it opened its mouth to display a row of nasty, blade-like teeth.

_A carnivorous kangaroo? That's ridiculous!_ Claudia thought. Then the creature leaped at them with a thrust of its powerful legs, and her next thought was: _I'm about to be killed by ridiculous. _

_I really do hate anomalies..._


	3. Act Two

**Primeval 7.2 **("The League of Anomalous Gentlefolk")

by qjay

___DISCLAIMER: Primeval was created by Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines. It does not belong to me. This is not-for-profit fan fiction, and no infringement is intended._

* * *

**Act Two**

Claudia flinched as the snarling kangaroo-thing flew through the air toward her. There was no time to avoid it, but fortunately, it flew right past her. Not so fortunately, it landed between her and Jess, pushed off again with those powerful hind legs, and leaped straight at her friend.

Claudia reached out, but it was far too late. Jess screamed, her face a picture of frozen horror-

_Thwump!_ and something struck the kangaroo in mid-air, sending it rolling across the floor, tangled up in some sort of netting. Claudia blinked several times, wondering what she'd just seen and whether she was going mad. The kangaroo thrashed and kicked, and she feared it might get free.

A powerfully built black man, brandishing some sort of crossbow weapon with a harpoon-like attachment, walked right between Claudia and Jess and secured the creature to a wall before turning to them. Though his face bore the scars of a life of hard living, he was attractive and probably younger than he seemed; he flashed a brilliant smile before speaking English with a slight accent:

"Ladies." Since neither of them knew what to say, they stammered and frowned as the man turned back to regard his catch. "_Propleopus._ Pleistocene megafauna. Never seen one of these before."

"Is...?" Jess cleared her throat. "Is it actually a meat-eating kangaroo?"

"Well," said the man, "more probably an omnivore. Quite dangerous, however, as you can see from the dentition. The odd thing, this fellow is highly agitated, and I don't know why."

"I'm... Claudia Brown," she said, which was at least half-true, "and this is-"

"Jess Parker," said the man as he rose. "Yes, I know. Everyone here knows about the ARC. I am Samuel Ekezie, a member of the outreach program."

Claudia frowned at his crossbow. "That's an interesting weapon, Mr. Ekezie."

Samuel glanced at the weapon as though just noticing it. "Do you like it? In my homeland of Nigeria, we lack funding to build a great many EMD devices. I was forced to improvise."

"You designed that?" Jess said.

Samuel shrugged. "And you refined the modern anomaly-tracking system to a work of art. I have always wanted to meet you."

Jess bushed, flustered by the attention- and perhaps, by that smile. "Yes, well- here I am. Though I'm not sure how much credit I deserve for the Hub. In the first place, in was Connor's design. In the second place, it seems to have failed us. That thing must have come through somewhere, and we didn't detect it."

"It may not be a new incursion," Samuel said. "When I arrived this morning, I helped the technicians bring up some exhibits from the basement. I found blood stains down there."

"Blood stains?" Claudia said. "But security would have swept the whole building."

"They were very faint. Someone had done an excellent job of tidying up."

"But you detected them?" Jess said.

The African delegate shrugged. "I have been a tracker all my life. I told your Richard Wilson, but I suspect he did not believe me."

Claudia shook her head. "I don't understand any of this. What do you think is going on?"

"I cannot say." Samuel frowned. "But if you will accompany me to the basement, I will show you what I have seen."

"The- the basement?" Jess said. "_With_ the blood?"

Samuel hefted his crossbow, and fixed a new cartridge to its business end. "It is quite safe, I assure you."

Without further preamble, he turned and walked back the way he'd come, toward the basement. Apparently he was going down there whether the women accompanied him or not. Claudia wasn't certain it was a good idea, but she disliked letting a man who'd saved them take such a risk alone. Then she noticed Jess, still staring after him, and smiled.

"You've got a crush," she said, sing-song.

"I..." Jess blinked several times. "What? No! I do not!"

"You always go for the tough guys," Claudia sighed. "Honestly, you're as obvious as Connor."

"No, I just-" Jess pointed back at the struggling kangaroo. "It was very impressive, with the creature and the net and the-"

"Jess," she smiled. "It's all right. Look, I don't want to get between you and Becker-"

The other woman looked away, her lips twisting into a bitter frown. "There_ is_ no 'me and Becker.'"

"Then what's the problem?" Without waiting for Jess to answer, she crossed to the intercom switch and pressed a button. "Security to the Tech Exchange."

Then, with a shrug, Claudia hurried after Samuel. After a moment, Jess accompanied her, blushing more furiously than ever.

* * *

Connor was still waiting for Danny Quinn's response, anxious to hear what could be so wrong with Abby as to justify delaying Connor on the way to a fairly important engagement, when Lisa Barrett cleared her throat and stepped close to Danny.

"We've got the intro briefing in-"

"Yeah, I know!" Danny said. "You're not responsible for me."

Lisa grunted. "_Someone_ has to be."

Danny rolled his eyes at her. "Look, just stall, all right? I need five minutes alone with Connor."

Connor stood back, quietly amused by this. When he'd visited Danny in America, a couple of years ago, he'd gotten the idea there might be sparks between his friend and Lisa, and he thought he recognised this sort of good-natured bickering very well. Unfortunately, he didn't have time to watch it all unfold.

"The thing is," he said, "I'm sort of in charge of... special security. I need to get started; it's important."

"So is this," said Danny.

Lisa turned to Connor. "I'm pretty familiar with your system; we based our whole setup in LA on it. If you tell me what you want done..."

Connor sighed; from all he'd seen, Lisa was entirely dependable, but he disliked leaving this business to anyone else. Still, he trusted Danny's instincts; he decided he'd have to chance it.

"Yeah, all right. Go to the control room; have them start Surveillance Program One. Keep it on passive scan, or it could be dangerous."

Lisa scoffed. "You Brits always say _danger_ like it's a bad thing."

"Oi!" said Danny. "When have I ever avoided danger?"

The American smiled. "You've avoided going out with me..."

_Yup,_ Connor thought,_ definitely familiar._ He remembered Abby surprising him in an abandoned old house- oddly, the same house where he'd first met Danny- coming up with a reason to kiss him on the cheek, then walking away with the same little smile that Lisa displayed now. Danny, like Connor once upon a time, couldn't quite muster up a good comeback to continue the flirting. If they were anything alike, Connor suspected he'd be regretting that for a good three months.

Before he could get too caught up in reminiscing, Lisa was gone and Danny was dragging Connor toward a disused conference room. His manner suggested a fair degree of urgency, and Connor was already steeling himself by the time Danny closed the door.

"All right," Connor said, "so I assume this is about the other timeline. Did something happen with the Director?"

He meant the anonymous American Director of Southfield, a dangerous terrorist who'd actually killed him in that other time and place, and been killed- temporarily- by Abby in retaliation. Although he was one of the few people on Earth who knew exactly what Connor was talking about when he referenced such things, Danny got sort of a funny look on his face. Then he pushed right past it:

"No, no. Well- almost, you know, but we handled it. He's back in the Supermax prison."

"Good place for him," Connor agreed. "So what's the trouble?"

Danny took a deep breath. He seemed to hesitate before speaking, which was weird- Danny rarely hesitated about anything. "You don't remember the other world, right? So all you know about it is what you've been told by Abby?"

Connor nodded, becoming concerned now.

"So the one thing you can't know is what she was like at the end. She was... possessed, out of control. She shot a man in the chest six times, right in front of me."

Connor shrugged, a little sheepish. "Well, he killed Rex..."

"Connor," Danny said, very serious, "he killed _you_. He killed a lot of people. And Abby took the whole world on her shoulders to stop him."

"She had no choice," Connor said automatically. "She did the right thing..."

"No, she didn't!" Danny shook his head. "That's what you don't understand. She did a wrong thing, Connor. A really, _really_ wrong thing. And she's never faced it. While you two were out of game, I didn't think it was my place to interfere. But she's running the ARC now-"

"What are you saying, Danny?" he asked. "Are you trying to turn me against Abby?"

Danny sighed. "I'm not against anyone-"

"'Cause that's never gonna happen!" Connor insisted. "She says Southfield had to be stopped; that's good enough for me."

Danny peered at him. "Why are you getting angry?"

"She used _my_ technology on _my_ instructions, to save _me_! So if you want to blame anyone, it should be-"

"_Why are you getting angry, Connor_?" Danny demanded, toe-to-toe with him now.

"_Because it should have been me_!" he exploded, feeling a sort of relief to finally have out in the open the thing he'd been thinking for over two years. "I should have made that call. I should have stopped them myself, and then at least I'd remember what we're arguing about. But I didn't. I left it on Abby, and now I've got a daughter who's worth more to me than this whole world of yours, so if you've got a _problem_ with it, Danny-"

"I don't!" Danny said. "I'm not trying to hurt Abby! I'm trying to help her! Don't you see, she's not all right? She's trying to do this huge thing, and she's still got the world on her shoulders, because there's been no one to share it with."

Connor shook his head, annoyed that Danny was starting to make sense. "If she was having trouble, she would have told me."

"Are you kidding?" Danny laughed. "You're the_ last_ person she'd tell! Do you not understand Abby at all? Don't you know you and Cutter were the first people who ever really believed in her? You saw the best in Abby from moment one, and that's all she wants you to see. Only now she's trying to be that person for everyone, all the time, and she can't do it alone."

Danny trailed off, spent. Connor wanted to be angry with his old friend for lecturing him about his own wife. But it was hard, because this wasn't the sort of thing Danny would normally do; Connor could tell his concerns about Abby had been weighing on him for a long time. And, deep down, he sort of thought he'd had the same concerns...

A knock on the door broke the tension. Neither of them wanted to answer at first, but it persisted.

"All right, Lisa, we're coming!" Danny said.

Connor kept shaking his head, although he knew he was being defensive. "She would have told me."

Sympathetic now, Danny clasped him on the back. "I've tried for two years to talk to Abby about this. She keeps cutting me off, for the same reason you did- she doesn't think I can forgive her. So imagine how she must feel about herself."

Connor didn't like to think about it. He still thought- _hoped _Abby would have told him, if she'd been hating herself for her actions all this time. But he knew them both just a bit too well. She was always the strong one- he was content to let her be the strong one. It was better for everyone that way. It suited their personalities, and besides- Abby was impulsive, sometimes angry, but until Southfield, she'd never really hurt anyone. Connor knew he could do far more harm, if he indulged the things he knew about anomalies. The things Helen's return had him contemplating...

The pounding on the door again, and Danny sighed.

"Lisa, yeah, all right!"

That's when Connor noticed the dents in the door- pronounced dents, in a thick sheet of metal.

"Um," he said, "I don't think it's Lisa..."

He and Danny stumbled backward, even as something hit the door again, and it burst inward with a thunderous_ crash_. Forcing its way into the room, stomping on the remains of the door, came a terrifying, five-metre, long-legged reptile, with a huge mouthful of serrated teeth...

"Well, maybe in a bad mood..." Danny mused. "What the hell is..?"

"It's a _Quinkana_," Connor said. "Terrestrial crocodile. Pleistocene epoch."

"You really have too many creatures memorised," Danny said, as the creature backed them both against the wall. "But... an anomaly, here? Now? Without warning?"

Connor swore under his breath. "It has to be Helen."

"_Who_? No! Oh, no! She _can't_ be-"

Connor shrugged. "Sort of puts the crocodile in perspective, doesn't it?"

The Quinkana struck, but Danny grabbed a chair from the conference table and barely fended it off. Connor grabbed another, to help him. But the two of them wouldn't last very long... as the crocodile took upon itself to illustrate, by grabbing Danny's chair and crushing it between its jaws. It moved in to finish the job...

_"Ay, cabron! Sigueme!"_

Connor thought that meant something like 'follow me' in Spanish. And the first part might have been a bad word. On the other hand, it might also have been the football scores. He really didn't recall the non-science part of his schooling very well...

Then a couple of EMD bolts pinged off the Quinkana's hide, and he assumed he'd understood the gist. The creature whirled and snapped at a newcomer to the conference room- an attractive Latina woman with a rough and ready air. She fired again, and the crocodile started lumbering after her...

"Run, you idiots!" she hissed, firing a final shot before turning to run from the crocodile.

As they both disappeared out the door, Danny slapped Connor on the back. He seemed almost grateful for some action.

"Come on, we've gotta help her!"

"We can't rescue her!" Connor said. "She's still rescuing us! It wouldn't be... sporting..."

"Just follow the damn crocodile," Danny said.

"Yup..." he sighed, and they raced out the door.

* * *

With Alan Hale tagging uselessly along, Becker left the main floor of the convention centre and went behind the large stage that had been erected for the Pulsar Convention's celebrity guests- actors and sci-fi creative types, most of whom Becker couldn't identify with a gun to his head- to address their adoring fans. Alan looked vaguely disappointed that he'd be missing their talks, but thrilled to be embroiled in a little spy drama of his own.

"This is so cool!" Alan said, gazing at the stage as they passed. "Captain Sisko of _Deep Space Nine_ will be standing on this very spot in just..."

Becker groaned. "Sorry, did someone break the glass and activate our Emergency Backup Connor?"

"You mean it?" Alan enthused. "You really think _I_ could be the next Connor Temple?"

"Only if my luck holds. Now, be quiet!"

Becker crept around the edge of the stage. He was sure he'd seen Natalya Azarova headed this way. Unfortunately, knowing Natalya, that likely meant she _wanted_ to be seen, and he'd just as soon not trigger any nasty surprises...

That's when the Russian agent fell on him from above, knocking him down. Becker rolled away before he even registered the pain, and came up ready for a fight. It was Natalya, all right, and she attacked with a series of martial-arts blows- _A bit slower than I remember,_ Becker thought._ Is she setting me up for something?_ But he couldn't get past her guard either, and after a moment they circled each other, panting, seeking openings.

_There-_ Becker struck even as he thought, again, Natalya was being uncharacteristically sloppy, and managed to knock her legs out from under her with a sweep kick. She fell in a tangle of long, black hair, but landed a boot in his own chest in the process, and sent him sprawling...

"I'll help!" Alan exclaimed. "Er- what do I do?"

"I don't know!" Becker hissed as he gathered himself. "Hit her with something!"

Even as Natalya found her feet and struck the recovering Becker with a scissor kick, knocking him backward again, Alan scrambled around looking for weapons he could improvise. Finding nothing, he hopped up on the stage and started tearing down the curtain...

Meanwhile, Becker managed to block Natalya's follow-up punch, and leverage his superior weight._ Again, sloppy, closing like that against a larger opponent. Is she toying with me?_

Either way, he was on the verge of subduing her when Alan dropped the curtain on them from above. Becker spluttered and kicked and tried to get free of the heavy material, but the more he struggled, the more tangled he got.

"Oh," said Alan's voice, seemingly at a distance. "Sorry..."

"Enough helping!" Becker snarled. "No more helping!"

He'd barely gotten free of the curtain and started looking for Natalya Azarova, when she hit him from behind, knocking him down and dropping him squarely on the floor. A moment later, she landed on his chest, her fist poised to crush his windpipe.

"Captain Becker," she said, with only a slight accent. She'd been practising her English. "Formidable as ever."

"Natalya," he panted. "You realise you only won because I'm reluctant to provoke an international incident?"

Natalya laughed, glanced at Alan. "I thought I won because your friend is an idiot."

"That also," Becker said. He rolled his eyes at her. "_Do_ you mind?"

With some reluctance, Natalya climbed off Becker and offered him a hand. He made a point of standing under his own power, without help.

"All right," he said at last. "What are you doing here?"

Natalya shrugged. "Attending the conference."

"You hate the conference."

"Sadly, the Russian government does not always consult me in these matters." Natalya tossed her mane of black hair. "And I do not believe I am the only one having trouble with my government. Have you told your friends the truth about our conversation?"

"What conversation?" said Alan, still gawking at them from the stage.

"Becker will have told you he spoke to me just before the Green Hill accident," Natalya smirked. "Actually, it was just after. He desired to collect certain... intelligence about the matter? Intelligence I doubt your Minister's office has seen fit to share with the public."

"Wait," said Alan, scandalised as his mentor would have been. "You mean you're working with a Russian spy?"

Becker hissed something foul under his breath, hating Natalya for sharing that tidbit. She only smiled back, content to get under his skin by any means necessary.

"I have to know the truth about Green Hill," he said finally. "I can't live with all those civilian lives on my conscience until I know I did everything possible to save them."

"Poor Becker," said Natalya, "still so noble. I'm afraid I quite pitied you. That's why I came here; to track you down and offer my help."

"Wait," said Alan, as he finally climbed down from the stage. "So all that sneaking about- that was _helping_?"

Natalya frowned at the youth as though he was beneath her notice, but Becker arched an eyebrow at her.

"It's a fair question."

Natalya smiled, a look that had melted the hearts of lesser men. "Perhaps I enjoyed renewing our acquaintance."

Becker was not immune, but he knew well not to fall for this trap- at least, not immediately. "Really? Because when Emily and I first saw you, it seemed you were looking for something. What was it?"

"The source of some odd readings."

"What sort of odd readings?"

The Russian shrugged. "They looked like an anomaly. Several, in fact. But they were very weak, and quickly disappeared.

"How did you detect readings we somehow missed?" Becker asked pointedly. "And with what?"

Natalya started to reply, then formed her mouth into an enigmatic smile instead of words. "If I told you that, all the mystery might go out of our relationship."

"If you're trying to develop a sense of humour, I'm not impressed, Natalya."

"Yes, I noticed." Natalya reached out to touch his arm. "It used to be much easier to... pique your interest?"

Becker brushed away her touch. "Maybe you became less interesting."

"Perhaps," she said, "but doubtful. This woman Emily, she is very lovely. Perhaps she is the reason."

"No!" Becker said, struck by how novel it was to even_ think_ of Emily that way. She'd been with Matt so long, and he'd been... "No, you know what? That's none of your business."

"Seems I have touched a nerve," said Natalya. "It's more than Green Hill that changed you, Becker. _Someone_ broke your heart."

Becker thought of Jess, shook off the thought as quickly. No sense letting Natalya get into his head. "I've got troubles enough without you playing silly games."

"Er, guys..." said Alan, somewhere off to the side.

"You used to like my games."

"Well, like you said. I'm different now. It was a long time ago."

Natalya cocked her head to frown at him. "Long enough to tame you. Pity."

"Yeah," said Alan, "but guys..."

Becker scoffed. "You know, I don't think these 'odd readings' of yours even exist!"

"Believe what you like," said Natalya with a shrug. "I need not explain myself to a _disgraced_-"

"_GUYS_!" Alan snapped. They both turned to look at him. "Sorry to interrupt, probably nothing. But I just ripped down the whole curtain from this great bloody stage in front of hundreds of people. Why did no one notice?"

It was, Becker had to admit, another good question. He and Natalya traded wary looks, and that's when they heard the first scream.

The three of them vaulted up onto the stage and looked out over the main floor- to behold a creature like a monitor lizard, but at least six or seven metres in length, sweeping out from under the stage, chasing the terrified convention-goers.

Natalya gestured at it. "You see? Odd readings."

Becker glared at her, then at Alan Hall. The trouble was, he couldn't think of a way to really blame the problem on either of them. So he turned to the problem at hand. And if he'd lost just a bit of confidence in his ability to handle such situations since Green Hill, or even- as Natalya suggested- since he'd allowed himself to become distracted by his personal life, well- for the sake of all those people down there, what was left of him would have to be enough.


	4. Act Three

**Primeval 7.2 **("The League of Anomalous Gentlefolk")

by qjay

___DISCLAIMER: Primeval was created by Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines. It does not belong to me. This is not-for-profit fan fiction, and no infringement is intended._

* * *

**Act Three**

Randall Royce turned out to be friendly, energetic, and clever, lavishing Abby with compliments and remarking expansively upon every subject related to prehistoric creatures, all while wearing a boyish grin that reminded Abby of Connor. Also like her husband, Royce seemed most enthusiastic about the sound of his own rambling. The only difference was, Abby had developed a built-in filter for Connor's chatter that alerted her to anything sweet, funny, or pertinent, while letting the other 98 percent of his comments pass. She had no such thing for Royce; being hit with the full force of his personality all at once was rather exhausting.

She'd never have admitted it to Connor- she was having far too much fun reminding him some people found _her_ interests fascinating, even if they rarely held extinct-lizard conventions- but she was more than happy to reach the conference room.

Once there, she excused herself for a word with Lester, hoping to use the ARC's director as a human shield, but she found him deep in conversation with Richard Wilson, unpleasant government weasel, and that was a rock and a hard place if ever she'd seen one. With a sigh, she settled in beside Royce at a wide oval table with over a dozen others of all nationalities, and was being pressed for her theories on raptor nesting behaviour when she happened to overhear an exchange between Lester and Wilson:

"Don't you think it's past time we started, James?"

Lester frowned. "I think we've still got several people missing."

Wilson dismissed that detail with an oily grin. "It's very important to the Minister that this conference proceed smoothly and_ on schedule_."

"Right..." Lester stood, looked around at the delegates, and cleared his throat. "Ladies and gentlemen. My name is James Lester, director of the Anomaly Research Centre of Great Britain. Welcome to the first-ever Conference for Emergency Anomaly Response."

Abby started clapping her hands for moral support. Royce joined in, and it turned into a round of modest but sincere applause. Certainly anyone who'd been studying anomalies in the last two years would have heard of Lester's founding role at the ARC. But Abby was more surprised to realise they were familiar with _her_ role, as when Lester turned and gestured in her direction:

"And, of course, I'm pleased to introduce our field leader, Abigail Maitland-Temple..."

Her applause was no less sincere (and, at least in Royce's case, perhaps more enthusiastic). Suddenly embarrassed, Abby acknowledged the attention with a small nod before averting her eyes.

"Abby shares responsibility for the ARC's scientific mission with her husband, Connor, who seems to be... running late, along with several of our other guests." The annoyance in Lester's gaze was directed at Richard Wilson, but there was probably a bit of it reserved for Connor, as well. "But I wish, particularly to acknowledge the presence of Mr. Xhiang of China, Mr. Leclerc of France, and Ms. Rothschild of Germany. Thank you all for coming."

Lester nodded to various delegates who were strangers to Abby, out of circulation for two long years, but they each got their individual applause, so presumably they all had their own accomplishments. When Lester didn't continue immediately after the applause died down, Abby frowned at him. He had an odd look on his face.

"On a personal note, I should like to add: I have been with the ARC for eight years, since the very beginning, when anomaly research was seen as mad and quixotic, not least by me." He smiled. "We've gone through a rough patch of late, but we've seen those before. All in all, I couldn't be prouder of what we've built. Which is why... it's so difficult to say goodbye."

Abby looked up in alarm. Her distress was vaguely mirrored on the faces of several delegates. Of everyone in the room, only Wilson seemed to know what was going on, or to be at all pleased by it.

"At the end of this year," Lester said, looking straight at Abby, "when the reorganised ARC is back on firm footing, I will resign my post in favour of Mr. Richard Wilson, whom I believe is known to you all."

Perhaps because the minister's special assistant _was_ known in this company, the applause he received was polite and hollow, a pale shadow of Lester's. Wilson's face betrayed resentment, but it didn't last long. There was too much good news for him in Lester's speech.

Abby herself was still reeling, shocked and betrayed. She could barely take her eyes off Lester's face as he concluded:

"Anomaly response may be a cutting-edge field, but I've always felt we were rather more like plumbers. We're only here to see the pipes remain unclogged and nothing too unpleasant backs up into the present. Perhaps as a consequence, I have often lost sight of the wonders before my eyes.

"Fortunately, I had Professor Nick Cutter, Matt Anderson, and a lot of other good people to show me what I was missing. I urge you all to continue their work in the same spirit. Thank you."

Subdued now, uncomfortably exposed, Lester resumed his seat. Royce stood at the same time and pounded his hands together, and soon the room was joined in a standing ovation for the man who'd guided anomaly response from the very beginning.

Abby didn't applaud this time. She was staring at Lester, hating herself for the way her eyes stung with tears. Her boss looked apologetic, and then he looked away.

She would have given a lot to have the uncomfortable scene disrupted, but not in the way it was: by a high-pitched shrieking _squeal_, a sound half metallic and half fingernails against a chalkboard. It began at the edge of Abby's hearing and quickly become so loud that half the delegates covered their ears.

By the time Lester found his feet, the noise had begun to die down. "Please don't be alarmed. As you know, our cover upstairs is a bit unorthodox. I'm sure they're just... sacrificing a Dalek, or whatever it is these people do."

Several delegates chuckled, and the room began to relax- until someone right outside the door screamed at the top of her lungs.

Abby was on her feet in a moment, with Royce right behind her. The door swung open: its metal surface was streaked with deep, jagged claw marks, and the opposite wall was splashed with blood. The body of a woman- one of the help- lay in the doorway, and standing over her, licking its dripping red fangs, was a shaggy creature the size of a big cat, but heavyset and bulky.

_Marsupial lion,_ Abby's clinical brain said. _Australian predator. Not in Smilodon's league as a killer, not fast by the standards of cats, but easily powerful enough to rip a human apart with those jaws..._

She assumed Royce and the other anomaly-hunters in the room were making the same deduction, but the former, at least, surprised her. He stared at the creature with wide eyes, pale as a sheet, as though he'd just seen something he couldn't quite believe. Understandable as that was on the first few missions, a veteran like Royce ought to be better at...

"I don't..." he whispered, working through it. "It's a _bunyip_!"

"More like a mad marsupial from the Pleistocene," Abby said. "What's a bunyip?"

"Aboriginal myth," Royce said. "A creature of evil, lurking in the shadows..."

_Oh, lovely, he likes cryptids. He might get on with Connor better than I thought._ While Abby fought her panic to a standstill, the lion, or bunyip, turned gleaming eyes on them.

"Royce," she whispered, "close the door."

"Every time an anomaly opens, I'm sure I'll see one, but I never have," the Australian murmured. "If it's come for us, we're doomed..."

"Close the damn door right _NOW_!" Abby snapped, and pushed past her colleague to slam several centimetres of metal in the charging marsupial's throat. Irresistible force met immovable object, and Abby rebounded from their collision; Royce pulled himself together to catch her before she fell. The door held, but with a very noticeable dent. Abby wondered how many more such charges it could withstand...

_How the hell did it get in here without warning from the Detector?_ Abby wondered, but for all the anomaly experts in the room, none of them possessed that simple answer.

* * *

Lisa Barrett made her way to the control room of the Convention Centre, to find herself in a cramped, stuffy chamber overfilled with state-of-the-art electronics- and, after a little while, Canadians. She nodded to Evan Cross and Dylan Weir, who joined her at a main console tended by several technicians. She put thoughts of Danny Quinn out of her mind- a task she was used to by now, if one she found herself performing with depressing regularity- before addressing the newcomers.

"Mr. Cross. Did you win your game of hide-and-seek?"

Evan frowned. "I'm not_ hiding_ from Connor Temple. After last time, we mutually agreed to give each other a wide berth."

Lisa arched an eyebrow at Dylan Weir. "That means _hide, _right?"

"Yes."

Evan glared at his comrade and got only a mischievous smirk in return. All in good fun, until an alarm sounded on the console.

"Getting an odd reading here," said one of the British techs.

"Let me see it," said Lisa. When he put up a building schematic and several charts on the monitors, she stared from one to the next with only the barest comprehension. "You're a genius geek, right, Evan? Take a look at this."

The Canadian team leader was already scowling, suddenly all business. "What the hell? This place is filled with some kind of... are those _neutrinos_?"

The technician shrugged. "Whatever it is, it's been building up since we ran the surveillance program."

"Connor's program?" Lisa said, and the tech nodded.

"See?" said Evan. "What did I tell you? Weird."

"All right, I'll give you this one," said Dylan.

"Can you make any sense of it?" said Lisa.

Evan pressed several controls, studying the problem from all angles, then shook his head. "Whatever I'm seeing is way beyond me, but it's not good..."

Lisa nodded. "Shut down the program, then."

"I wouldn't know where to begin!"

Lisa stood back and hissed, wondering if she most hated computer nerds or old friends of Danny's. Just when the moment was getting tense, another of his ARC cronies poked her head into the control room the control room: Well, sort of a crony. The way Danny told it, he'd only met Emily Merchant once, during his brief return to the ARC a few years back. But she had the ARC vibe about her- slightly inspired, slightly mad. Lisa knew it well.

"Does anyone know where to find James Lester?" Emily said. "I've been having trouble with the coms."

"I'm not surprised," said Evan, with a nod toward the monitors. "Whatever this is, it's probably knocked out half the building's electronics."

On cue, the lights sputtered and died. When they came back dimmer- emergency lighting from a backup generator- Emily was standing in a half-open automatic door.

"...and there goes the other half," she said.

"You_ had_ to tempt fate," Dylan muttered.

"Oh, come on!" said Emily. "You 21st Century types are too dependant on your technology. We're far from helpless!"

That's when the cackling and squawking echoed down the corridor behind her. Emily whirled; Lisa and Dylan joined her at the door. Several huge, nasty ostrich-like birds with wickedly sharp beaks and claws had appeared in the corridor. They were so large, they could barely fit their long necks under the ceiling, and they seemed highly agitated.

"They're called_ Dromornis_," Dylan Weir explained. "'Striton's Thunder Birds.' This is... really bad."

"Oh, the giant birds are _always _the worst," Emily grumbled, in such a matter-of-fact tone that Lisa was not inclined to doubt her. "I'll grant that a bit of advanced technology would come in handy just _now_."

Lisa agreed with that, too; unfortunately, there was none to be found, and the Thunder Birds were getting closer...

* * *

Samuel Ekezie led the way into the dimness of the Convention Centre's lowest level, while Claudia Brown and Jess Parker followed with increasing trepidation. Then the lights sputtered and failed, and dimness turned abruptly into darkness.

"Oh, lovely," said Claudia. "This should be fun."

"All under control," Samuel said. He produced a small torch and shone it on the stairs before them.

Jess smiled. "You came prepared."

"I spent my early career as a guide for rich tourists. One learns to expect the unexpected."

Samuel held forth the torch, revealing a wide chamber piled high with all sorts of boxes and spare parts for booths and displays. Then he panned over to the far corner, where a brownish-red discolouration of the floor could be seen in the torch's light.

"This is what remains of the bloodstain. It must have started out considerably larger."

Claudia frowned as she approached the barely-visible blotch. "I can see why security missed it; sure it's not just rust?"

Samuel crouched down beside the stain. He touched it with two fingers, touched those to his lips, and spat out what he tasted. "Definitely not."

"Oh!" said Claudia. "Do people actually do that outside of films? You have no idea where that blood has been!"

"What's this over here?" Jess murmured.

Perhaps feeling a bit nauseous about the blood, she wandered across the room, toward another dark shape Claudia had taken for part of a stage. If she was hoping to impress Samuel with her cleverness, though, she would have done better not to trip over it headlong.

_Poor Jess,_ Claudia thought, wincing as her friend gathered herself off the floor.

"Jess! Are you all right?"

"Er... yes," Jess sighed. "I'm fine. I seem to have tripped over... well, over a rather large turtle."

"Her middle name is Grace, you know," Claudia explained to Samuel.

It worked out well enough for Jess, however; Samuel crossed the room and helped her up, looking into her eyes perhaps a moment too long in the process. Then he stepped back and shone his torch on the offending reptile.

It was a turtle, all right: two metres long, with odd bony protuberances on its skull. Samuel called it _Meiolania,_ the second-largest turtle that ever lived, and said it was reasonably harmless.

"Now we have a problem, though," he said. "Like the creature you encountered, Meiolania was from Australia. But not from the Pleistocene; it wasn't even extinct until two thousand years ago."

Claudia frowned. "Two Australian anomalies? Or one that somehow appears in the same place at different times?"

"What we need is a third creature," Jess said, "to establish a pattern."

Samuel shrugged. "That would certainly help."

Claudia glanced around the basement, and took a sudden step back. She pointed toward the tallest pile of boxes. "How about that one?"

Jess looked a question at her- until the pile of boxes suddenly moved, lurching toward them with a nervous, jittery gait. Samuel raised both crossbow and torch; the new creature was like nothing Claudia had ever seen; but then, she hadn't been acquainted with a certain unfortunate janitor.

"Am I mad," she said, "or is that a very large wombat?"

Samuel nodded. "_Diprotodon._ Australian again. And clearly unsettled by something, as all these creatures seem to be."

Jess moved forward, spooking the overstuffed creature. But she moved slowly enough to reassure it and managed to stroke the side of its massive head.

"Oh, it's adorable!" she said. "If we could take creatures home as pets, this is the one I'd want. Well, in pocket size."

Claudia wasn't so sure. "Get away from it. It may be dangerous."

"Ordinarily, it would be slow-moving and extremely docile," Samuel shrugged. "Even now, I doubt it will attack. Its greatest danger to us is probably as bait."

"Bait?" Claudia said. "You don't mean-"

But he did; as if to illustrate Samuel's point, one of those blasted carnivorous kangaroos launched itself out of nowhere and landed on the Diprotodon's back, sinking its dagger-like teeth into the great beast's flank.

Samuel fired his crossbow, but this time the beast was too fast, leaping off Diprotodon at the last moment and landing in their midst. It lunged at Samuel, who managed to kick it away. When he tried to locate it again with the torch, however-

The dozen other kangaroos on the opposite side of the room became visible.

* * *

The Latina woman who'd saved Connor and Danny ducked into the convention centre's cafeteria. In one fluid motion, she leaped a table, turned, and fired several EMD bolts at the giant Quinkana crocodile that followed her inside. Unfortunately, the weapon was having a limited effect, and the creature kept coming, sweeping chairs out of the way with flicks of its massive tail.

She faded away from it, peppering the monster with EMD's as she backed toward the door leading into the kitchen. But soon enough, she was backed up against those doors, and the crocodile's jaws were snapping at her. It got tangled up and wedged itself between two tables, but it would break free in moments and there would be nothing to stop it from killing its prey...

That's when Connor burst through the kitchen door with Danny, the pair of them carrying a huge pot of food- everything they could find, on the stove and in the freezer, dumped into a makeshift stew, up to and including a couple of whole chickens.

"_Que es_...?" said the woman.

"Oh, don't mind us," said Connor. "We're just the cafeteria ladies..."

"Saw a bloke do this in Florida once," said Danny.

They dumped the pot all over the floor in front of the Quinkana; when it broke free, it first went for the chickens, giving Connor and Danny time to grab the Latina woman and make a run for the kitchen. Inside, Connor looked for something to stack in front of the heavy door. He reached out to grab a stool-

"Ow!" he yelped, and drew his hand back as a burst of static electricity left him with pins and needles burning all through the appendage.

"You all right?" Danny said as he wedged the stool against the doors. "You hurt?"

"Got a shock," Connor said, waving his hand about uselessly. "That really stings..."

Danny rolled his eyes. Then something slammed against the door, all but shaking it off the hinges. Danny glanced out the window, and drew back from the snarling creature's maw.

"Well, it's done having tea, and this barricade won't hold."

"It's not leaving here any time soon," Connor said. "It can smell the food."

"I don't understand why the EMD's not working on it," said the woman. She turned and smiled at Danny- quite a big smile, under the circumstances. "Irene Marquez. I'm with the Exchange program, from Venezuela."

"Danny Quinn."

"Yes, I know," Marquez said. "You were my favourite."

Danny blinked a couple of times. "Favourite what?"

_Wham._ The Quinkana tried again the break down the doors, but they barely held. Danny ran to the freezer and started hauling out heavy boxes of food to stack in front of the door, while Marquez explained:

"The early missions of the ARC are required study in the exchange. We know all about all of you. Everyone has their favourites."

Connor laughed. "You're saying we have_ fans_?"

Marquez glanced at him, then turned back to Danny. "He's supposed to be the cute one. I don't see it."

"He sort of grows on you." Danny shrugged. "Anyway, glad to know you..."

He began to shake Marquez's hand, but drew back abruptly, both of them exclaiming at once: "_OW!_"

Connor's wheels started turning as the doors shuddered again. "Wait, did you both just get a shock?"

"What of it?" said Marquez. She turned to helping Danny with the boxes while Connor paced the floor, frantically trying to make his brain work.

"Two shocks in two minutes. There's a high level of static electricity building up in here. Probably high levels of a lot of things. That's why the EMD's aren't working properly. The room's saturated. It's the surveillance program!"

"What are you talking about?" said Danny.

Connor sighed, tried to think of a way to explain it. "Okay. Um... special security, right? We've been expecting Helen to make a play, so I installed a program to- well- remember the Organian Peace Treaty?"

"Not even a little bit," Danny said.

Sometimes Connor really hated hanging out with non-geeks. If only Emily were here... or even Alan! Anyone from the Pulsar convention would have understood the reference without forcing him to burn up valuable seconds explaining.

"Look, it's basic _Star Trek_ knowledge! The Organians stopped a war between the Klingons and Federation by making all the surfaces too hot to touch..."

"Connor, this had better be going somewhere!" Danny snapped, as the Quinkana smashed the doors nearly to their breaking point.

"But don't you see? That's where I got the idea!"

Finally, something clicked for Marquez. "You're describing a passive EMD field."

Connor nodded eagerly. "Yes! Exactly! I rigged the system so an EMD charge could be delivered through any surface in the convention centre! That way, when Helen showed her face-"

"You'd fry her," Danny said, with a grin.

"Well," Connor winced, "stun her. Though if you wanted to take her back to America and a nice electric chair, I wouldn't complain."

If he'd been surprised by Danny's simmering anger, his own made him do a double-take. Connor knew he hated Helen Cutter- blamed her, in fact, for most of the worst things that had ever happened to him. Just thinking of her return had turned his mind to all sorts of thoughts- things he could do with his anomaly research to protect his family from the worst. But he still wasn't quite prepared to hear himself speak of her death with such savage approval.

Fortunately Marquez knew nothing of this subject, and steered the conversation back to the problem at hand: "Could this background charge have caused anomalies to appear?"

Connor shook his head. "No, no way. A strong electrical charge should_ inhibit _the formation of anomalies."

"It could drive creatures mad, though," Danny said, flinching from the window just before the Quinkana charged again. "That's why Junior out there is so aggressive."

"Well, it_ is_ a crocodile," Connor said. "I doubt it needed much help..."

Marquez sighed. "But how do we turn off this charge?"

It was, Connor had to admit, a hell of a question. But its answer was both self-evident (to him) and supremely unhelpful:

"Can't be done, except from control."

Considering how unlikely they were to ever pass through those doors and make it to control with all their limbs attached to their bodies, the mirror image of discouragement on Danny's and Marquez's faces was probably well justified.

* * *

Back in said control room, Dylan Weir led a phalanx of technicians in a mad scramble to stack boxes and furniture in front of the wedged-open doors, the better to discourage determined avian intervention. Emily was back at the computer with Evan Cross and Lisa Barrett, but she was beginning to think she was a liability, given that she found computers indistinguishable from magic.

She was just about to switch to the barricade team, when Evan touched her arm.

"Hey, guys?" he said. "Small problem. Take a look at this."

One of the thunder birds burst through the barricade and kicked up a fuss before being driven back. It knocked over one of the technicians, ripping the poor man's shirt (and a layer of his skin) with its diamond-hard beak. Emily checked to make sure the man was getting medical attention and the door was again blocked before turning back to Evan.

"Oh, just a _small_ one?"

Just as though she hadn't snarked at him, Evan said, "I think this energy build-up has been keeping us from focusing on something worse."

"What could be worse?" Lisa asked.

Evan turned one of the monitors so they could both focus on a schematic of the building, which was rapidly being swallowed by a computer model reminiscent of a gigantic tornado.

He arched an eyebrow. "How about an anomaly the size of King Kong that's about fifteen minutes from ripping open time and swallowing this entire building?"

Emily felt proud of herself for having studied under Connor well enough to understand the reference to a film made seventy years after her time. It would have been highly embarrassing to have to ask for clarification of the terms of her death sentence...


	5. Act Four

**Primeval 7.2 **("The League of Anomalous Gentlefolk")

by qjay

___DISCLAIMER: Primeval was created by Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines. It does not belong to me. This is not-for-profit fan fiction, and no infringement is intended._

* * *

**Act Four**

Emily Merchant stared at the strange, glowing screen that seemed to symbolise all the futuristic things that had vexed her since the day she'd met Matt Anderson and the ARC team. There certainly was an... anomaly-shaped pixelated thing on the screen, but she could no more vouch for its authenticity than she could flap her arms and fly.

"You must be wrong," she said to Evan Cross. "I've been chasing anomalies for years; I've never seen anything like _that_. How do you know about it in advance?"

"Good question," said Lisa Barrett. "At least in the States, we've never had much success predicting anomalies."

Evan shrugged. "Nobody has. But look... did you ever run a pencil over a notepad to reveal the outline of what was written on the last page? Right now there's a lot of lead in the air and it's starting to resemble something."

"Like what?"

"Armageddon?" Evan suggested.

Emily hissed out a long breath. "All right, so how do we stop it?"

Evan shook his head as he studied the computer monitor. "First thought: Find Connor Temple and get him to shut this damn thing down."

"No coms and no time," Lisa said. "Moving on to second thoughts..."

_I've been having second thoughts for months now,_ Emily said to herself. Aloud, she amended that to: "Look, just keep working. I'm sure you can do anything Connor can do."

Evan grinned. "Would you mind recording that sentence and playing it for him daily?"

Emily was about to make a rather cross reply- pun not intended- about men and their rivalries, but she was interrupted when something crashed into the barricade at the door. Boxes went flying, and Dylan Weir rushed to batter back the razor beak that had pried its way inside.

"Guys!" Dylan hissed. "This isn't gonna hold..."

Emily turned on her. "Nothing holds for long, but it will damn well hold for now, so brace it however you can and _buy us time_!"

She was slightly surprised when Dylan snapped into action, forcing back the Thunder Bird and shouting orders for the technicians to fix the barricade. A well-bred if unconventional lady of the Victorian era, Emily repressed more on a given day than most future people left unexpressed in their whole emotive lives. She considered it a point of pride, but...

_But apparently disillusioned, time-displaced badass is a mode that works for me,_ she thought. _Who knew?_

Lisa Barrett, meanwhile, favoured her with a canny glance. "I'm guessing... issues of some kind?"

Emily sighed. "You have no idea."

"I work with Danny, so... yeah. I do."

The American's sympathetic glance said everything about the perils of falling in love with heroes from the ARC. All of time and space seemed to leave precious little room for a life of one's own, and generally all you could do was tread water until eventually some new crisis cost you everything.

_All right_, Emily thought. _Maybe that's so... but not today. There will be no crisis today. I will not allow it._

If she had to personally thwart whatever dire threat was gunning for her team this time, then Emily would do precisely that. Matt would have done nothing less.

* * *

The power was gone, the table and most of the chairs had been stacked in front of the conference room doors, and anomaly-hunters of every stripe milled about the now-empty room, each with a vague feeling they ought to take charge of the situation somehow. Meanwhile, the creature actually in charge of the situation- the marsupial lion- paced outside the door, periodically attacking it in a new fit of frenzy.

Abby stood watching it, feeling deeply troubled, and Royce copied her alert posture. Further back, Lester and Wilson were taking stock of the situation.

"Are you just going to let it roam free out there?" the Minister's aide said.

Abby shook her head. "It shouldn't be attacking indiscriminately like this. It's wrong."

"This isn't predator behaviour," Royce confirmed. "This is madness. It's the bunyip."

Wilson rolled his eyes; Abby had to admit she felt the same way. She seemed to recall knowing how to be whimsical once; in recent years, anomalies and the Cretaceous and mad alternate timelines had burned all that out of her. These days, the closest she came to flights of fancy was when Connor carried her along in his enthusiasm. It could be fun- but she didn't have time to take such a trip with Randall Royce, certainly not right now. Exotic marsupial or bunyip, what was out there was just another creature that needed containment and proper care.

Fortunately, Wilson turned back into a bastard before she had to be seen agreeing with him: "Well, _someone_ had better do _something_! We have a serious problem here, Ms. Maitland, and you are paid to deal with problems."

"No," Abby snapped, "I'm paid to be in charge and you _put_ me in charge, so either sack me or sit down and shut it!"

Wilson blinked several times, screwed up his face into a glare, then dropped the glare and looked to Lester for help. When the other man shrugged, he turned to the crowd of delegates and assumed his most officious manner:

"Everyone, please, stand back! Our team has things completely under control..."

Lester suppressed a smirk and approached Abby, who did her best not to look at him. He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

"Nicely done. I can see you'll have no problems handling him."

Abby sighed. "What do you care?"

"Well," Lester shrugged, "I can't help but take a certain pride..."

Abby turned her back, resolved not to let him make light of this. For all their disagreements, Lester had been their touchstone at the ARC for as long as she could remember. If Professor Cutter had gotten the place up and running, Lester had kept it running, made it feel like the same place, made it a _home_ for the team in the years after Cutter's death. The thought of the ARC without Lester...

She remembered something he'd said when he'd wrangled her and Connor back into service over their many objections. _A lot of bureaucratic nonsense. You needn't concern yourselves._

"Is this about Green Hill?" she said. "Did you know this was coming?"

Lester was as nearly unreadable as anyone Abby had ever met, but somehow she felt terribly certain she'd hit on the truth, even before he nodded. "Becker isn't the only one who erred at Green Hill, at least in the eyes of the Minister. I approved his actions; right or wrong, I make an excellent scapegoat. I'm afraid keeping the project alive in any form used up the last of my leverage. There's nothing I can do."

"You can fight them!" Abby said. "They can't do this to you- to us! It's not fair!"

Lester's perfect calm somehow made it all the worse. "Has it occurred to you that I might be perfectly happy with this resolution? The ARC was never my preferred assignment, and I feel now I've spent too long there. There's no need for heroics on my account."

The words struck hard, and for a moment they were both silent. Then Abby continued, against her better judgement:

"You said you loved us. In the other timeline, when things got bad. You said you loved us all, and I believed you."

Lester arched both eyebrows in such comical exaggeration, he almost seemed to be doing an impression of Lester. "Clearly I had gone mad from the strain."

"Connor and I wouldn't have come back for anyone else!" Abby raged. "If you'd said you were leaving..."

"You didn't think I'd stay forever?" he said, infuriatingly reasonable.

"I didn't think I'd be Wilson's errand girl!" Unable to hold back any longer, Abby turned on him. "I need your help. I admit it."

Lester stood back, didn't seem to know what to say. Then he smiled, an even odder expression on his face than the mask of scepticism.

"You don't need anything from me, Abigail. You have always been capable of doing exactly as you pleased."

"That's what scares me..." Abby breathed, thinking of the other world.

A minute passed in silence; Abby feeling stupid and emotional and betrayed, Lester resisting whatever human impulses he ever felt. The moment desperately needed a change of subject, and Randall Royce provided one by edging closer to the door.

"Listen," he murmured. "I don't hear it."

"Perhaps it's finally moved on," said Lester.

"Yeah," Abby sighed, "but to where?"

Since there was no way to answer that question without shifting their makeshift barricade, Abby grabbed a chair and started in. After a moment, Lester picked up on what she was doing and cleared his throat.

"Well, go on and help her, everyone! Especially _you_, Richard!"

Wilson made a face, but eventually even he assisted in dislodging the barricade. When the way was clear, Abby took a deep breath and reached for the doorknob.

"Stay here," she said. "Keep trying your mobiles. Whatever this interference is, it can't last forever."

"I'm going with you," Royce said.

"No, I won't be long," said Abby. "Just-"

"Oh, come on!" the Australian grinned. "There's a predator out there that may or may not steal souls, and we're gonna face it in the dark with no weapons! I wouldn't miss it!"

Amused despite herself, Abby inclined her head in a small nod. "All right... let's go."

The corridor was nearly pitch blackness, without even the mobiles and tablets of a dozen delegates to provide illumination. Abby eased her way out the door, looking one way and then another. A couple of the others dragged the body of the marsupial lion's last victim into the conference room, out of harm's way. Judging by the mess, Abby would have hoped for... bloody tracks, or something, but only the stained floor and scratched-up door remained to prove the creature existed.

"Nothing to track," Abby said. "Which way?"

"Hold on, I'll tell you." Royce reached into his pocket and removed an old, tarnished coin with a hole in the middle. He showed it to Abby, beaming with pride.

"You could just pick a direction," she said.

"We need a bit of luck," said Royce. "This is a genuine holey dollar from 1814. Little piece of Australian history."

Abby scoffed. "How do you know it's lucky?"

"Same night I took it home from the pub, I also took home this incredible woman I met on a dig in Siberia. _Believe _me, it's lucky."

"Okay," said Abby. "I think that's-"

"That was a ripper weekend! We-"

"Flip the damned coin," Abby said, not wanting the sordid details. Even the mental images she'd already acquired were problematic.

Royce tossed his coin high in the air, caught it, and showed it to her. "Heads. That way."

Abby didn't remember actually calling it, but Royce seemed confident and one direction as good as another. So, with a sigh, she turned down the right-hand branch of the corridor and set off in pursuit of a born killer...

* * *

Upstairs on the convention floor, Becker had problems of his own, of which the people watching his back were not the least. There was Alan Hall, who seemed to be a cut-rate Connor Temple without the years of experience and with approximately half the social skills. And then there was the Russian spy and ex-flame who either still harboured feelings for him or wanted to kill him, or possibly both.

The best that could be said for them, in Becker's mind, was they were preferable to the giant monitor lizard currently tearing up the convention floor.

"That's _Megalania_," Alan said. "Largest predator in the history of Australia."

Becker hissed through his teeth. "Have we got any weapons?"

Natalya Azarova produced an EMD pistol and showed it to him. "Unfortunately I think you will find its effect limited by the odd readings I mentioned. The background interference will sap its power."

Becker frowned. "You've become quite the EMD expert. The Natalya I remember preferred doing things the old-fashioned way."

"It's the 21st Century, Becker. I adapt to the times."

"Pity," he sighed. "Well, come on! Let's get after it!"

He jumped off the stage, with Azarova right behind him. It took a couple of moments before Alan Hall joined them, and Becker heard him grumbling at the edge of his hearing:

"So... we're not even gonna consider calling for help, then? Lovely."

The floor of the convention centre was in chaos- booths overturned, patrons running in all directions, panicked and screaming. Becker shouted and stamped for the lizard's attention, and finally managed to turn its massive head in his direction. But before it could charge-

Azarova lit it up with EMD bolts from the opposite direction. Stung but hardly slowed, it turned this way and that-

As Alan Hall finally launched himself into the fray. Unfortunately, he stumbled over an overturned booth of sci-fi collectibles, and flopped face-first into a pile of autographed pictures, props from Hollywood sets, scale models- all trampled and ruined.

Alan scrambled away from the grisly scene, staring back in horror at the wreckage of his geeky fantasies. "No, no, no, no... _BASTARD_! You maniac! You've gone and ruined it! _DAMN YOU_! Damn you to-"

Fortunately for Becker's eardrums, Megalania chose this moment to turn and knock Alan across the room with a flick of its tail. The poor kid bounced off the floor a couple of times before crashing to a halt in a mass of overturned tables that had once been the snack bar. And the thing that had stopped his momentum-

"Exterminate! Exterminate!"

Becker shook his head and blinked several times as he ran to meet Alan and the handful of other convention-goers taking shelter in the rubble. The metal thing that had stopped Alan was as tall as a man, but shaped like a pepper-pot, with some some of weird eye-stalk at the head and a plunger for an arm...

Alan shook his head blearily as he tried to absorb what he saw. "Blimey... I've died and gone to the Doctor."

Moments later, Becker and Azarova hopped over a ruined table to reach him. The latter turned and fired her EMD repeatedly to discourage reptilian pursuit.

"Are you all right?" Becker asked. Without waiting for an answer, he turned and frowned at the robot-thing. "What the hell is this?"

A portly, bearded nerd turned from giving Alan a hand and showed Becker a remote control. "Isn't it brilliant?_ Actual_ robot in the shape of a Dalek. Cost me a few quid, I don't mind saying."

"What does it do?" Becker asked.

The nerd shrugged. "Oh, not much. It's not a proper Dalek. Technology's not there yet, thankfully. It really just spins about and says 'Exterminate!'"

"But what do they _ever_ do, right?" said Alan, and the two nerds laughed at something that was apparently very funny in their world.

Becker looked between the remote-control robot and the approaching lizard, and the shadow of an idea began to form in his mind. The only trouble was, it was completely mad. Having nothing better in mind, he turned to Alan.

"You want to be the next Connor Temple, right? Could you hot-wire that thing?"

Alan stared at him for a long moment before grinning at the pseudo-Dalek. "It's only been my lifelong dream, sir."

Becker held out his hand. "EMD, Natalya. We need a minute."

"You'll get it," the Russian sighed.

Despite looking extremely doubtful, she charged out from cover and drew Megalania's attention. By shouting and jumping and throwing things at it, she managed to get it moving in the opposite direction. Meanwhile, Becker grabbed the remote control from the nerdy fan.

"Oi! What do you think you're-"

His protests turned to a squawk of despair as Becker ripped the front panel off the Dalek robot. Alan Hall took two seconds to look like he might get sick, then dove into the thing's innards...

_This had better work,_ Becker thought. _It would be an absolutely humiliating way to die..._

* * *

In the kitchen, Danny Quinn was reduced to bracing the door with his shoulder, while Connor and Irene Marquez unwrapped the last of the chickens they'd found in the freezer.

"Connor!" Danny called, as the crocodile outside nearly broke his spine with another charge. "It's not gonna hold much longer!"

"Coming!"

Danny's two companions arrived from the freezer at a dead run and began putting their chickens all in a row- leading from the splintering door back to the freezer itself. A seven-course feast for a frenzied carnivore.

Danny glanced from the row of chickens back to his colleagues. "Anyone think this'll actually work?"

"Should be easy," Marquez said. "Like the old story. 'Hansel and Gretel.'"

Connor didn't look as certain. "Make sure the ovens are off. Otherwise it'll be drawn to the heat. How we're gonna get it in a_ freezer_, I've no idea..."

Danny sighed. "Let's hope it's still as hungry as it is cross."

He reached to bolt the door- and Connor caught his wrist, staying his hand.

"You're wrong, though," his friend said, "about Abby. I know she would have told me if she was struggling. We talk all the time."

"Yeah, you talk." Danny shook off his grip. "But do you_ listen_?"

Another sortie by the Quinkana knocked Danny away from the door, staggering him. The wood splintered-

"Gentlemen, we are out of time!" said Marquez.

Danny straightened to his full height; the pain in his lower back made him wonder if he was really too old for this sort of thing. But ready or not, the crocodile was coming for them, so...

"Right. Here goes nothing."

As the Quinkana charged again, Danny unbolted the door and stood aside, letting it charge into the kitchen. Connor and Marquez backed away from it, and the huge crocodile looked from them to the chickens- and went after the humans.

"Connor, dammit!" Danny snarled as he evaded the thing's tail.

Busy dealing with the business end, Connor could only yelp, "Don't look at me! They're frozen solid and we're a hot meal! I told you it didn't like the cold!"

"I think we need a new plan," said Marquez.

She pulled open a drawer underneath the kitchen counter and began throwing sharp implements at the Quinkana- meat cleavers, steak knives, and the occasional kebab skewer. Meanwhile, she ushered Connor and Danny past her, into the freezer.

A blast of frozen air struck Danny at the same moment a final knife embedded itself in the crocodile's nose. Marquez stepped backward, barely missing a snap of the jaws, and slammed the door behind them.

When he'd determined his companions were uninjured, Danny hugged himself, shivered, and swore. They were safe inside the freezer. They were also quite trapped, and the predator had the run of the place.

* * *

Down in the basement, Samuel Ekezie had used up his net attachment and crossbow bolts, and was reduced to using a pistol to fire conventional ammunition at the mad kangaroos. He gave ground slowly, firing again and again, as Claudia and Jess backed up the stairs behind him, fleeing a hopping tidal wave of insanity...

"You see?" Jess said. "This is exactly why I didn't want to go to Australia on honeymoon!"

Claudia frowned. "You were going on honeymoon? With Becker?"

The younger woman blushed. "We were just talking, you know. Before we... stopped talking. He was all 'outback' and 'adventure' and 'scenic natural splendour' and I was like, 'Yes, but what about the _bloody kangaroos_?'"

Despite herself, Claudia laughed. "When we get out of this, you must tell him you were right."

"_If_ we get out of this," Samuel said, past another gunshot. "I'm running low on ammunition. We may have to run for it."

He'd turned his head slightly to speak to the women; in that instant, a kangaroo leaped in past his guard and sank its fangs into his shoulder. Samuel howled with pain and dropped his pistol, but couldn't seem to shake it off.

Without even thinking about what she was doing, Claudia grabbed up the gun and fired half a dozen rounds, striking the same number of creatures squarely between the eyes. Meanwhile, Jess grabbed a wooden plank from one of the disassembled booths and smashed the kangaroo attacking Samuel over the head. It dropped, and she pulled him up the stairs, away from danger.

They made it halfway up the stairs without interruption- the disorganised lot of remaining kangaroos had been frightened into temporary retreat. Jess stopped to inspect Samuel's torn sleeve.

"Are you all right?" she asked. "This looks bad."

"It's a scratch," he said. "I've had worse."

Jess seemed doubtful, but decided to accept that when she apparently realised she didn't have any medical knowledge anyway. Besides, she had another target for her concern.

"Claudia," she said, staring at her friend. "Where did you learn to shoot?"

"Oh." Claudia cleared her throat, wondered what she could say, finished weakly, "Haven't I always... been able to... do that?"

Jess frowned. "You went to the range once with the team. Becker still laughs about it."

"I've just... been practising," she said. "Anyone can improve."

"Yeah," said Jess. Her concern for Samuel took over, and she seemed about to let the matter drop. Then, just before turning, she added, "But for a second there, you seemed like a whole other person..."

Claudia turned away, as quickly as she could without appearing ridiculously suspicious. She told herself not to panic; the incident would soon be forgotten. What were the odds, after all, that Jess was correct? That some other entity, an identical woman called Jenny Lewis who happened to be an excellent shot, had taken up residence in Claudia Brown's memory? What, really, were the chances she wasn't the person any of her friends thought they knew, but an alternate-Universe doppelgänger with a husband, a life, a_ history_ that had been denied her by a change in the timeline?

None of those things sounded remotely likely; not even to Claudia, who knew they were all true.

* * *

In the darkened corridors of the convention centre, Abby and Randall Royce were on the hunt. They'd finally picked up some scratches on the floor that seemed to have been made by the marsupial lion's claws, and thought they were tracking it in the proper direction, but they were a long way from knowing how to deal with said creature, even if they could find it. And something else nagged at Abby's mind, a small aside that wouldn't go away...

"About this woman who gave you the coin... she was Russian?"

"Yeah," Royce said. "Head of security for the locals in Siberia."

"What did she look like?"

Royce made eye contact and managed a small laugh. "Not jealous, are you, luv? Believe me, I'm flattered, but it'd never work between us. Your husband-"

Abby groaned. "Royce, I'm trying to ask you about something important!"

The Australian came to a sudden halt in the corridor beside her. "On the subject of important news..."

He pointed into an empty conference room on the other side of a cross-corridor. There was the marsupial lion, a hunched, heavyset, deadly bundle of fur and muscle with eyes gleaming in the dark. Catching sight or perhaps scent of them, it dropped to the ground and crossed the space between them in three long strides before leaping to the attack...


End file.
